Dijkstra's Tweetstorm
Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal of Oxide Computer Company discuss Edsger Dijkstra’s 1975 tweetstorm, using it to explore how programming languages shape cognitive models and engineering decisions. The conversation covers the pedagogical value of early languages like BASIC and Perl, the specific challenges of learning Rust, and the hardware bring-up struggles at Oxide involving iCE40 FPGAs and I2C level translators. They emphasize that while early languages like BASIC foster enthusiasm, deeper understanding requires exposure to lower-level concepts like C and memory management, a lesson reinforced by Oxide's own hardware debugging experiences.